Federal prosecutors in Texas have moved to drop all but one of the 12
fraud charges against Barrett Brown, a writer charged with crimes that
involved data stolen by a member of Anonymous.
In a motion to dismiss
(.PDF), the government today offered no reason for the move. Brown
still faces a single charge of possession of stolen credit card numbers
with intent to defraud, and a separate indictment for threatening an FBI
agent.
The move comes a day after Brown’s defense attorneys filed a 48-page
motion to dismiss the charges against him, on grounds that the
government failed to substantiate that Brown had committed a crime. It
also comes just as the Electronic Frontier Foundation was preparing to
file an amicus brief next Monday on behalf of several journalism groups
that have expressed support for Brown.
Brown, whose prosecution threatened to become a First Amendment test
case, was charged with 12 counts centered around a link he posted in a
chat room that pointed to a file containing data stolen from the
intelligence firm Stratfor, or Strategic Forecasting. The data, stolen
by Jeremy Hammond, a member of the loosely affiliated Anonymous
collective, included company emails as well as credit card numbers
belonging to subscribers of Stratfor’s service.
Brown didn’t steal the data but simply copied a hyperlink from one
public chatroom and reposted it to another. Eleven of those charges
accused him of aggravated identity theft for possessing and trafficking
in stolen authentication features — which authorities identified as the
three- and four-digit card verification value (CVV) that is printed on
the back of the cards.
The twelfth charge, for access device fraud, accused Brown of
illegally possessing the stolen cards — presumably cards that were found
on his computer after he downloaded the Stratfor cache himself.
(Click link below to read more)
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Thursday, March 6, 2014
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